


Wonderful Things

by akamarykate



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kivrin always believed in fairy tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderful Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crumblingwalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumblingwalls/gifts).



Kivrin always believed in fairy tales.

When she was quite young, she loved the princesses best. Whether they had dark or fair hair, whether they lived in castles or cottages or towers, whether their helpers were mice or dwarves or toads, their lives held the magic that she longed for. They pricked their fingers, cut their hair, lost their slippers--every manner of tragedy--and then they were whisked off to happily ever afters by handsome princes.

One day, she would wear a beautiful dress (it would be blue) and a sparkling crown (it would be silver). She would endure her hardships with patience and kindness, and her prince would save her in the end.

When she was older, she found a book of fairy tales on a shelf at her grandmother's house. It had a frayed green cloth binding and a faded painting of an oak tree on the cover, and it smelled of must and dust and truth. Any book as old as this, with its curlicued titles and gilt-edged pages, must contain the most ancient and accurate versions of the stories.

What she found inside turned her beliefs upside down. The truth did not lie in beautiful dresses and magical help. The truth was bloody and cruel. Fate turned on red-hot iron shoes, eye-pecking crows, and parents who would murder their children to make their own dreams come true. And yet, somehow, goodness and justice won out. The princes still came; the ever afters were still happy.

Fascinated by every horrible word, she read the stories over and over. If they were true, she reasoned, they must hold clues about how to fix the horrible things that happened in the world, every day. Her reading led her to a new truth: magic might happen to the princesses, but magic didn't come from them, and they didn't control it. Neither did the princes.

One day, she would wear a tattered dress (it would be black) and a fraying hat (it would be pointed). She would draw down magic to comfort and heal and solve, and she would wield the power that drove the stories to their happy endings.

When she was older still, she learned that there was more than one kind of truth. There was the truth of historical record, salvaged from archives, ruins, and digs, or witnessed by impartial observers who were trained to blend in and bring back reports and data.

One day, this kind of truth would be the foundation of her professional life.

Fairy tales were a different kind of truth. The events they recorded were long lost, buried under layers of shame and taboos and retellings. They could never be entered into the historical record as factual occurrences, but what they said, and how they were told, gave clues to the mindsets of the people who told them. And Kivrin believed that truths still lay at the core of her beloved stories, truths about love and faithfulness, and the power of doing the unthinkable to fix the world. She took these truths with her wherever--whenever--she went.

When she was as old as she thought she'd ever be, she nearly lost her belief in fairy tales and their truths as she tried to dig a grave in a frozen churchyard. The crude spade knocked against the ground, the pain from her broken rib stole her breath, and the earth wouldn't open for her. If she could not bury Father Roche, how could she ever make the story come out right?

Though she'd worn a blue gown and a crown of sorts, though Agnes had thought her a princess, no prince was coming to rescue her.

Though she'd mixed potions and called down knowledge that must have seemed like magic to all of them, though Lady Imeyne thought her a witch at first, she hadn't saved anyone. Not a single soul. Not even herself.

Defeated, she sat with her back against a tombstone and put her hands together to wield the only power she had left. She spoke into the corder and hoped the story she told--facts and truths alike--would turn up in Ms. Montoya's dig. No one would survive, but maybe the story would.

And then her prince came, after all.

"You rescued me," Kivrin said when he visited her in the hospital.

Mr. Dunworthy, a hollow-eyed prince with greying hair, gave her the ghost of a smile. "You sound disappointed."

"No, I'm grateful, of course I'm grateful. It's just--I thought I could do it myself." She looked down at her hands, covered in calluses and chilblains. "I thought I could prove to all of you that the middle ages shouldn't be a ten. I thought I could save them. I thought I could find my own way home. I didn't do any of those things."

Mr. Dunworthy took one of her hands in his and turned it over. He pointed to the small scar on her wrist where the corder had been removed. "You did save them, Kivrin. Every bit of them you knew. If you hadn't been there, we wouldn't have known a thing about them. And as for doing it yourself, if you hadn't been so brave, you never would have held out long enough to be rescued. When you first came to me, I thought you fancied yourself a fairy tale princess, but you were stronger than anyone could have expected."

Kivrin closed her eyes and thought of Father Roche. _You have saved me. From fear. And unbelief._

"It's not every bit," she said, and when she opened her eyes, Mr. Dunworthy was looking at her with a puzzled expression. "In the corder, I didn't capture all of them. There's so much more." She nodded toward the chair on the other side of the bed. "Sit down, and I'll tell you a story."

* * *

 _"Most of them were terrible," she said softly, "but there were some wonderful things."_


End file.
